Physics Colloquium: Hunting Gremlins on Two Continents: Tales of a Laser Whisperer

Gremlins are mythical creatures who inhabit physics labs and introduce anomalous results into experiments. The problems attributable to gremlins are subtle and go beyond the usual kinds of experimental problems. I spent a large part of my sabbatical troubleshooting several experimental setups at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Some of these problems were subtle enough that gremlins were starting to seem to be a real thing. I will present some of the problems encountered and the process of solving them.